Survey and examples of economic evaluation of health programmes in developing countries.

To demonstrate the principles of economic evaluation of health programs 6 studies are described in detail with the aim of illustrating the methodology and considering the policy relevance of the studies. The studies are classified according to the objective of health intervention investigated and the form of economic evaluation. 3 broad groupings of intervention are recognized: disease specific health program specific and those that aim at general health improvement or reduction in disease and cut across individual health programs and diseases. The evaluative approaches include cost description and analysis outcome description and analysis cost minimization analysis cost effectiveness analysis cost benefit analysis and cost utility analysis. The studies considered are an examination of the cost of primary health care based…